Artist Eamon Colman reveals the lure of art and landscape from an early age to John P O’Sullivan
To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience, it is depth that counts, not width,’ Eamon Colman quotes from Patrick Kavanagh, and it sums up his connection with the landscape that is expressed in his painting. Colman is fond of Heaney, Kavanagh and Ted Hughes – those poets close to the land like himself. Their work resonates with him; his move to an isolated rural location in Kilkenny was inspired by a desire ‘to get to know the landscape more intimately’. As a teenager living on the Malahide Road in Clontarf, he would head off to Wicklow at weekends and end his day ‘sleeping under a bush’. Walking has been a constant in his life and his conversation is peppered with references to formidable hikes. Many of these came after successful shows that had bought him time to indulge his passion. He sold eleven paintings in his first show in 1980 at Karl Mullen’s gallery in Tulfarris Co Wicklow, which enabled him to spend four months walking in Snowdonia.
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